By HTN Staff - 6.17.2019
Hoteliers have a lot of challenges. Among these challenges are fluctuating variables that often create uncertainty in pricing decisions.
What price I should sell my hotel rooms at today? Should I follow my competitors’ pricing? Is there a price war going on? How do I shift bookings from OTAs to internal? What is the correlation between the change in my bookings and competitor prices?
One of the solution providers addressing these challenges is Infor, which is introducing a new solution, dubbed Infor Hospitality Price Optimizer (HPO). The cloud solution, which was just announced today and will be generally available this summer, is designed to deliver better pricing decisions for hoteliers.
The solution works by considering the pricing process from the guest’s point of view, including what sources a guest looks at, and compares, to make a booking. Infor expects that HPO will help hoteliers make better decisions more quickly, confidently price rooms left to sell, and increase bottom-line profits.
The goal is to provide a strategic price and distribution channel on which to publish this price, factoring into account distribution costs for the channels, which will help to boost revenues and profits. The solution provides simulators to predict the impact that a change of price on a given day will have on demand and expected revenues.
The solution uses competitor prices in its final price recommendation. What’s more, it can define which hotels should be considered competitors from the consumer perspective.
Infor’s in-house design agency, Hook & Loop, conducted research to help ensure a good user experience. The solution also leverages Infor’s Coleman artificial intelligence platform for infused text and voice interaction, and Infor Ming.le social business capabilities.
The launch of this new product, built on the backbone of Infor OS, should help further strengthen Infor’s global platform of cloud solutions for the hospitality industry. Integration with the flagship Infor HMS hospitality property management system should also help extend the value of Infor customers’ current technology investments.
Over the past 12 months, Infor has overhauled its product suites while acquiring companies to expand its breadth of products.
These acquisitions include ReServe Interactive and Vivonet, adding Infor Sales & Catering and Infor POS to the Infor Hospitality product suite. Infor is now able to offer a comprehensive and integrated solution for hospitality organizations, and also expand its footprint with solutions that increase Infor’s presence and scope in non-hotel hospitality venues such as entertainment centers, restaurants, stadiums, food service providers, wineries, and conference & convention centers.
In addition, Infor has focused on the digitalization of Infor HMS with the launch of guest self-service tools. The new HMS Online Check-In process allows hotels to better prepare for guest arrival and have room keys ready.
With Infor HMS, guests receive an email invitation for online check-in on their mobile device, and can start the process through their browser – eliminating the need to download additional applications to access these features. This entire process optimizes hotel operations and should also help improve guest experiences.
Infor released the latest iteration of Infor HMS, version 3.8.0, incorporating feedback from customers to develop new features and functions designed for specific markets in the hospitality and gaming industries. This included additional accounting functionality, tools to allow hotels to track guest-requested amenities as part of a loyalty program, player rank, or specific guest status, enhanced HMS events capabilities, new mobile applications, and a compliance update.
In January, as reported here, Infor received a $1.5 billion investment from shareholders Koch Equity Development and Golden Gate Capital. This investment builds on KED’s investment of more than $2 billion in early 2017, and it represents an important milestone as Infor reportedly considers an IPO later this year.
